


His Husband's Breathing, His Wife's Heartbeat

by Emby_M



Series: We Pry What Happiness We Can [3]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Reminiscing, Universe Alteration, poly marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 08:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17998610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emby_M/pseuds/Emby_M
Summary: But most of it is notebooks. Notebooks and notebooks and notebooks (John was getting into making them these days, was filling a few himself too) filled with drawings of their family -- John and Abigail attempting a four-handed duet on their upright; Jack fallen asleep on Abigail's shoulder, John whittling beside her. Uncle and his banjo. Uncle asleep under a tree, Rufus tucked up against his knees. The sweater Abigail knit for Arthur, pencil line picking out every stitch.-John thanks his lucky stars for his family.





	His Husband's Breathing, His Wife's Heartbeat

"Look at her," John says, quiet in the space of the bed.

Arthur is looking. He was already looking when John told him to.

It had been a hard road.

But Arthur -- his earliest friend, his treasured lover -- stares down at her -- the woman he loves with all his heart, the woman they went clean for, the woman who bore him a son and, more than that, bore them joy. And he knows Arthur is watching to put it on paper tomorrow morning, capture in loose lines the feeling of this moment.

John has to take those moments too. To look at them.

It hadn't been easy. Lord knows it had been near impossible, once or twice.

Like that period where Abigail couldn't take the kind of half-hearted departure from gang life the two of them took, when she left for a couple months, taking Jack with her. When the two of them scrambled, when he buried the sorrow of losing her in Arthur's shoulder. When Arthur, near-weeping, murmured that they needed to start clean.

But she had come back. Thanks to Sadie's urging. Thanks to Bonnie visiting them and laying out how exactly they were idiots. Thanks to Charles and Javier and Eagle Flies, who built that house alongside Uncle, even as Eagle Flies was healing and Javier would have to nag him to sit back down if he overdid it.

She'd come back with Jack and Rufus, and when she'd seen that homestead she had taken a running leap into their arms, peppered their faces with kisses that -- at the very least -- had made John feel awfully special.

And now- now? There was furniture from their neighbors and gifts from their friends, and room enough for anyone who wanted to stay -- they had a home. With a room for Jack, and a room for Uncle, and a guest room too. And they had their own big bed with a big feather mattress, and every night Abigail would settle here in between the two of them and be warmed by her "wood-stove husbands."

Arthur slips his thick arm around Abigail's waist, pressing his lips up against her shoulder, looking and looking. In the morning, maybe even soon, by the moonlight, he'll take one of the pencils strewn all over the house and his journal and carefully mark out her peaceful face, sketch the way she looks, fallen asleep so quick after a long day.

There are so many notebooks, neatly arranged on their bookshelves, next to Jack's funny novels and Mary-Beth's new works and all the books Orville had sent their way so Abigail could continue her doctor's assistantship.

But most of it is notebooks. Notebooks and notebooks and notebooks (John was getting into making them these days, was filling a few himself too) filled with drawings of their family -- John and Abigail attempting a four-handed duet on their upright; Jack fallen asleep on Abigail's shoulder, John whittling beside her. Uncle and his banjo. Uncle asleep under a tree, Rufus tucked up against his knees. The sweater Abigail knit for Arthur, pencil line picking out every stitch.

Their friends and guests were never spared either. Charles mussing Javier's hair the same way he did eight years ago -- the way Eagle Flies hooks an arm around both of his lovers' waists and how Javier still lowly cusses him out as Charles chuckles. Bonnie and Sadie riding up on their wagon with a fresh picking of peaches, looking for what it's worth like goddesses of the West. The coy, gentle way the two of them lean into each other. Orville, when he visited, gaze sharp without drink or opium. Orville -- the reinstated Reverend Swanson -- giving a quiet service to their collected friends underneath the linden tree they have in the yard.

John's favorite couple of pages, though, is the day he proposed to both of them.

He took them down to Blackwater. Made some excuse. He doesn't remember exactly what, but they went down -- and how strange it was, to go back to that town they couldn't return to for so long? And they'd had fun that day -- they really had, some clean honest fun. They saw a moving picture, and Abigail sat rapt until she noticed the arms he and Arthur'd draped on her seat back, and then she had giggle-whispered "I'm trying to watch the picture!" when the two of them pressed her close, squishing her between them. They'd nearly got cussed out by some priss fed up with their flirting, but he'd turned to see two matching outlaw-stares and had swallowed any complaint promptly.

And they took pictures. He'd dropped near twenty dollars on it -- on photos of the three of them. The photos that sit on their mantle. Him and Abigail, Arthur and him, Abigail and Arthur. And the three of them, one bonded trio.

The photographer -- a man who Arthur chatted with as he worked, found they had a mutual friend in someone named Albert Mason -- seemed perplexed at first, but fell into an easy rhythm with them. He seemed intrigued, even beyond the cash, saying "Oh, the three of you?" before smiling, quietly.

Posing was a challenge though. With him and Abigail, Arthur had ribbed them from the photographer's shoulder when they'd balked -- there were suddenly too many arms and limbs and levels to pick from, and Arthur had laughed, "Look at you, loverboy, flustered to even touch our gal."

It was John's turn to laugh when Arthur swayed Abigail under his arm in some playful attempt at ballroom elegance, but the photographer had smiled awkwardly and reminded them that had to hold still, please, the exposure time on this isn't exactly quick... Even so, there was something to watching the easy way Abigail laughs, the sweet, roguish way Arthur is with her.

Abigail had a grand old time when she was the odd one out, she laughed and laughed and laughed as they adjusted, then strode over and fixed the both of them so they didn't look so hopelessly sloppy.

But when it was finally the three of them, it was easy. Abigail took the chair (they would've insisted if she hadn't taken it anyway) and the two of them settled in behind her, hands laid together on the chair. Abigail had smiled, leaned her head back against his stomach, taken Arthur's hand in hers.

And then, the prints carefully tucked into Arthur's breast pocket, a grin spread along his and Abigail's face, the two of them danced in the streets and pulled him along. The sun had started to set, in a firey haze of orange and pink, and the two of them were smiling at him, and he knew he was making the right decision.

He took both of their hands, led them down to the water's edge. Trying to play coy, keep it under wraps. "No one will think anything," he said when Abigail put forth someone might think they're stealing, "Not gonna tip the boat, then," when Arthur had joked about John's inability to swim. Arthur fought him for rowing (and shoved at his face for the oars), Abigail had teased them they were just trying to show off for her (and she was kind of right), but the two of them were silent when he knelt and pulled out the matching bands he'd bought.

It's that moment that's drawn big, split across two pages, in one of those journals. Arthur carefully wrote down the words he'd said to them, just under that drawing, and then the next two pages were just three words, written over-large in ink: **I'm getting married**.

John thinks about their wedding day just about every day -- the nervous kisses he had plied from Arthur, waiting outside for their bride, Abigail sashaying out onto the porch of Beecher's Hope in a dress the two of them hadn't seen, posing haughtily but then jumping into their arms and kissing them just as nervous, the way they had held each other's hands. The silver bands they had all slipped onto each other's fingers (Arthur had gotten rings for the both of them about the same time John had, even picked the same type).

He thinks about that night too, where there was plenty of fun, sure, but they had all sank into their big bed together, cuddled close. When Arthur had taken Abigail's hand, kissed the stone in Mary Linton's old ring, chuckled lowly about how it would have been just wasted on Mary. When they all kissed each other goodnight, calling each other "husband" and "wife" and feeling all the world like something had gone right.

John Marston-Morgan cannot believe his luck.

Some God had looked at him -- looked at them, all their sin, their dirty dirty souls -- and decided to give them this. It was forgiveness, it was charity, it was above all else redemption.

They are happy, he thinks, settling his cheek against Abigail's soft shoulder. Listening to the sound of his husband's breathing, listening to the sound of his wife's heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> :,)  
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
